Goat Babies?

The pregnant goats at the petting zoo down the road are due any day now.

When I talked to the owner on our way home on Tuesday he let me know a neighbor down the road already had goat babies if we wanted to see babies sooner than waiting on his. When I told my kids about maybe walking down to the the other neighbor's babies, H said, "That's okay, I'd rather see babies of the goats we know."

How cool is that? My kids have so many baby goats around they can pick and choose the ones they want to go see.

We're going to check today to see if the babies of the goats we know have made an appearance yet.

We might even make a loop and check on the other neighbor's babies while we're at it, but mostly because he has a very sweet and friendly orange tabby kitten that came up to the fence and played with us the last time we went by.

Goat Babies!

Two to be precise.

After feeding the petting zoo animals for about 15 minutes we were ready to head out to the other neighbor's yard, since all of the goats we could tell were pregnant still looked very pregnant, and there were no little babies tottering around.

Then I heard some extra noise coming from the shelter in the back. At first I wasn't sure, since it was so far away and just looked like a brown blob, but there was a baby goat in the corner of the shelter. After a minute or so it started to struggle to get up. It failed and gave up, and after watching for a few more minutes I decided to bring our dog (we brought Pete with us on the walk this time) around closer to the front of the property in the hopes that the owner's dogs would bark and alert him to our presence.

It worked and the owner (we'll call him Farmer) invited us in while he checked on the babies (it turns out there was a little white one too, it was laying so still in the dirt we missed seeing it). Farmer got a towel and after massaging the white one for a while he rushed it inside. It was alive, but very unresponsive. Farmer then brought out a heated towel for me to wrap the brown one in, then a bottle a little while later to feed it.

After feeding the goat an ounce and a half from the bottle we were told to put him down and let him try to stand up. We stayed an extra twenty minutes cheering on the little guy until it was decided that the mother was too uninterested in the baby to raise him herself. The black goat joined his brother inside to be hand raised by Farmer.

We'll check back tomorrow, since Farmer told us he'll let them out during the day to play. Also, they should know by tomorrow if it looks like the little white one will make it.


Me feeding the black baby.

After the bottle, seeing if he can figure out how to stand.

Momma showing some interest in baby, but not enough.

The other baby, a little more responsive than at first, but his chances still aren't good.

I don't know how long before Farmer would have found the babies if we hadn't been there. Since the mother wasn't caring for them, we very well may have saved their lives by letting Farmer know they were there.